


Wherever you stray, I follow

by petalrock



Series: creek walk small talk [3]
Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Boys In Love, First Kiss, Flirting, Getting Together, M/M, Rated T for swearing, creek - Freeform, early tbh, i wrote this so so late, ive gone rogue, nymph!Calum, rock paint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 19:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30043506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalrock/pseuds/petalrock
Summary: Michael has no idea how Calum manages to make legitimate art out of what is quite literally just wet rock dust.“Oh, shit, it’s getting dark.”Fuck. Maybe if Michael ignores Calum, he won’t have to go home.“Do you think we could make, like, green? Are there green rocks? Do rocks come in green?”“Mike.”
Relationships: Michael Clifford/Calum Hood
Series: creek walk small talk [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2208660
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Wherever you stray, I follow

**Author's Note:**

> More creek content babey! Truly it is my favorite place on Earth right now and I runneth over with inspiration so I've decided to just ride the wave. The stream, I should say. Haha. But actually these have been so nice and easy to write it's been such a good feeling. 
> 
> This is the last real idea I had for one of these, so I can't promise if there will be more. But given how often I visit the creek odds are something will come up. 
> 
> Thank you once again to my darling Taylor for looking at this and giving it a title from willow, one of my favorites off evermore, and being such a good friend once again. And Molly for sending me gun emojis when she caught me awake at 5 a.m. I love you guys.

“The key to making rock paint is finding rocks that are soft enough to grind down,” Calum says as he picks through the riverbed several feet away. Michael is standing on shore, because he values his Converse, and it’s way too cold to wade barefoot. “So, like, see this one?” Calum calls, holding up a dark red rock. “This is a pretty color, but it’s basically solid granite. So we could use it to grate softer rocks against, but we can’t make paint out of it, because it’s too hard.”

“Stupid useless granite,” Michael supplies, because he’s not really sure what to say. He’s just enjoying watching Calum be so invested in this whole rock paint business. It’s endearing. Do the charms of Creek Boy ever end? Calum spins suddenly and underhand tosses the red rock towards shore. Michael doesn’t move fast enough. 

“Motherfucker!” he yelps, unsuccessfully avoiding the splash as the rock hits the water by his feet. 

He looks up in mock-outrage to see Calum grinning at him. He looks cute. Michael flips him off. Calum giggles—giggles!—to himself and continues to select stones out of the creek. When he finally makes his way back over to Michael, both his hands are full of rocks. He crouches down and dumps them at the ground at Michael’s feet, picks two, and stands back up.

“Alright, so all we do is—” and he starts rubbing the rocks together vigorously, sort of like an amateur survivalist on a nature show trying to start a fire. “And then we get paint!”

He holds one of the rocks out for Michael to see. Michael sees nothing. It looks like a normal rock. It must show on his face, because Calum laughs. 

“Here, give me your hand.” He does not have to ask Michael twice. 

Calum swipes his index finger across the rock, and Michael sees it come away a yellow ochre. And then Calum is crowding into Michael’s space, taking his hand, pushing his sweatshirt sleeve up a bit, and painting a bracelet around his wrist. His fingers are soft. He strokes across the veins on the underside of Michael’s wrist, and Michael’s pulse jumps three feet straight into the air. Michael is rooted to the spot. He may never move again, and he would be totally okay with that. 

“There,” Calum says softly. Michael looks at the band of yellow around his wrist and then at Calum, who’s already looking back. Michael is pretty sure he hasn’t taken a breath in about sixty seconds now. This moment feels like staring at the icy creek rushing past. Michael’s afraid to step in and get swept away in the current. 

“Yellow looks good on you,” Calum says, still with the same quiet tone. Like he’s telling Michael a secret. 

“Thank you,” Michael breathes. He can’t look away from Calum’s eyes. They’re so dark and expressive, it’s ridiculous. Hypnotizing, almost. But then Calum breaks eye contact, squeezing Michael’s hand lightly and letting go. 

“I think I got a pretty promising red rock that wasn’t granite,” Calum says, dropping back down to root through the pile of rocks. 

Michael exhales shakily through his nose. Inhale, two, three, four. Exhale again. Alright. So that was a Moment. Capital M? Yeah. Michael is going to replay every inch of what just happened in slo-mo as he falls asleep tonight. Possibly multiple times. 

“Red would go nicely with yellow,” Michael agrees. His voice comes out normal, surprisingly. 

The red they make does go nicely with yellow. So do the blue-gray and three different shades of brown. 

“Eighty percent of the time, you get fucking brown,” Calum laments. “The plight of all rock artists.” 

Michael loses track of time. This is likely a result of how much Calum touches him, his gentle hands painting patterns across Michael’s skin. Michael's single yellow bracelet evolves into a multicolor swirl that circles his whole forearm, and he gets a dark gray armband on his opposite arm. 

Calum gives himself far more intricate designs, spirals and dots and circles running up both arms to the rolled up sleeves of his t-shirt. A flower blossoms on the inside of his left forearm. Michael has no idea how he manages to make legitimate art out of what is quite literally just wet rock dust. 

“Oh, shit, it’s getting dark.”

Fuck. Maybe if Michael ignores Calum, he won’t have to go home. 

“Do you think we could make, like, green? Are there green rocks? Do rocks come in green?”

“Mike.”

“What about purple?” Michael crouches at the edge of the water to get a better look at the river rocks. As if the selection has changed since he last checked five minutes ago. 

“Michael. You have to start walking home before it’s pitch black out.”

“But I don’t wanna.” Michael is aware he sounds like an actual child. But he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to say goodbye to Calum. He never wants to. Walking home in the dark and thinking about being murdered the whole time is a price he's willing to pay for a few extra minutes with Calum. 

“What if I walk with you?”

“You can’t,” Michael says. They’ve been over this. “The lower trail is too narrow for two people and hard for me to see in the dark, and the upper trail is too far from the water for you.”

“I can go on the lower trail and you can go on the upper.”

“But they’re so far apart, there’s like a whole half a hill between them, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

“Well, what if we make it a race?”

Hmm. Now there’s an idea. Michael does enjoy a good sprint down the upper trail. It’s exhilarating. He’s done it enough in broad daylight to be able to do it in the dark. Probably. 

“Okay, fine.” Like it was ever actually debatable that he would be going home. Sadly, he can’t stay over with Calum. He’d drown. 

Calum offers Michael a hand, and Michael lets himself be pulled to his feet. He doesn’t let go of Calum’s hand. The trail doesn’t split in two for a little while. He’s going to take as much Calum contact as he can get. 

They start walking downstream, towards the trail entrance. The sun has set, and darkness is creeping in, always faster than Michael expects it to. The joy of dusk is all of the animals that make themselves known. A symphony of crickets. Owls calling to one another way above in the eucalyptus trees. The invasive eucalyptus trees, Calum had informed Michael the other day. Rabbits with fluffy white tails grazing along the sides of the path. 

Calum’s hand is warm and a little damp from when he’d rinsed his hands of rock paint remnants. Their shoulders bump together every few steps. Michael feels comfortable. But he also feels closer than ever to dipping just one foot into that rushing river. 

Michael feels Calum stop walking, and he realizes they’ve reached the fork in the trail. He has to take the little wooden staircase to the upper trail, and Calum has to hang right onto the lower trail. They turn to face each other at the same time. Michael holds a little tighter to Calum’s hand. 

“Will I see you tomorrow?” Calum asks. When did Michael’s life become a fairytale? He feels like some sort of fucking prince charming, visiting a beautiful mysterious spirit in the woods. He can still see Calum’s pretty eyes, even in the oncoming darkness. 

“Of course,” he says, leaning into the cheesiness and meaning every bit of it. If he in fact is living in a movie, he’s going to make sure it’s the most cavity-inducing rom-com ever made. The type of movie he would never watch himself, because he is too cool for that shit. Until now, apparently. 

Calum drops Michael’s hand and slides his arms around Michael’s waist, hugging him tight. Michael wraps his arms around Calum’s shoulders and leans their heads together. Calum is so warm and he smells so good, and then he’s pulling away suddenly. 

“Race you!” Calum shouts, and takes off down the lower trail. 

“Bastard!” Michael hollers, and charges up the stairs two at a time. 

He hits the top of the trail and breaks into a sprint, dodging the potholes he knows by heart. The air is colder without Calum to keep it away, and it makes Michael run faster. He can just barely hear Calum down on the lower trail, light footsteps punctuated by silences as he jumps the branches that the storm last week blew into the way. 

Michael does his best to count his breathing so his lungs don’t burn. The trailhead comes into view. Down on the lower trail, Calum laughs delightedly. Michael grins. He’s way too out of breath to laugh. 

Michael blasts past the trailhead sign and slows to a walk. He’s paced three circles to catch his breath when it occurs to him that there’s no good way to determine a winner. They’re on different trails. He wonders if Calum already knew that going in. 

“Goodnight, Michael!” Calum’s voice carries up the hill. 

Something fiery takes flight in Michael’s stomach and lands in his chest. 

“Wait, Calum!”

His voice is stupid breathless. He doesn’t care. Michael backtracks down the trail to where he knows there’s a makeshift dirt staircase down to the lower trail. Staggering down it, half-blind in the dark, he hits the bottom and feels hands wrap around his elbows. 

“What are you doing, dork?” Calum laughs. “You have to go home.”

“I—I can’t.” He feels light headed with anticipation and something stronger. “I forgot something.”

“What did you—”

Michael cuts off Calum’s question by kissing him. For two seconds, nothing moves. All Michael can hear are the literal crickets and his blood absolutely roaring in his ears. It sounds like a coursing river. Then, Calum hums, slides his hands around Michael’s back, and pulls him closer. 

It’s incredible. Calum tastes sweet and he feels warm and Michael is holding the sides of his face with both hands. In case he turns to river water, or something. It just feels right. They pull apart right as Michael thinks he is surely about to pass away from lack of oxygen. 

Calum presses his forehead against Michael’s and laughs, sounding just as winded as Michael feels. 

“Of course you would choose to do this now, when we have no time, because you have to get home,” Calum says. 

“Hey, fuck you,” Michael laughs back. “At least I did it. You certainly weren’t going to.”

“You don’t know that. I was actually just waiting for the right moment. When I could, like, see your face, and also not be so fucking out of breath.”

“Oh yeah? Like during the two hours we spent doing fucking rock paint?”

Calum says nothing. Michael grins. 

“Ha! I win.”

“Does this mean I lose?” Calum asks. He ducks down and kisses Michael again. “Because that feels inaccurate.”

Okay, this is fucking awesome. Michael could have done this sooner. It probably would have worked out okay. But this Moment right now feels like exactly what was supposed to happen. Michael lets himself hold Calum for a few more breaths, and then, even though it nearly causes him physical pain, he pulls away. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Creek Boy,” he says softly, running his thumbs back and forth across Calum’s cheeks. They are just as squishy as Michael thought they would be the day they met. Delightful. 

“See you tomorrow,” Calum echoes. He presses close, kisses Michael one last time, and draws away completely. Michael hears more than sees him retreat into the water. Slow footsteps, a quiet splash. 

Michael turns his face skyward and looks at the expanse of stars littering the sky, sparkling like sunlight on creek water. Like laughter through fresh forest air and joy in deep brown eyes. He closes his eyes and smiles. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on the tumbles at Cringeycal <3


End file.
